Broadway Journal

AMBASSADOR THEATRE GROUP & ITS PRODUCTIONS SECURED $79 MILLION IN U.S. AID (EXCLUSIVE)

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As lead producer and landlord of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, Ambassador Theatre Group has bragging rights to the most commercially successful play of the 2021-22 Broadway season.

The average ticket price for the Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick revival was $213 the week ended May 29, behind only The Music Man and Hamilton. Pairs go for as much as $2,051, which includes Piper-Heidsieck Champagne and Ladurée macarons served in a semi-private lounge at ATG’s Hudson Theatre.

The U.K.-based conglomerate isn’t crowing. “ATG does not control, and cannot provide comment about” Plaza Suite, an ATG spokesman told Broadway Journal in an email. Continue Reading

FOUNDERING ‘PARADISE SQUARE’ GHOSTED GROUP SALES CHIEF, LAWSUIT SAYS

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EXCLUSIVE: Paradise Square has had a bumpy road to Eden.

Nominated for 10 Tony Awards, the second-highest total of the season, it was Broadway’s worst-selling musical in the week ending on May 8, posting just $194,000 in ticket sales. Since its first preview on March 15 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, it hasn’t come close to its weekly breakeven — $599,000, per an estimate in its 2019 operating agreement. (Comparably sized musicals usually cost more to run.)

A new lawsuit against Paradise Square Broadway LP filed in New York Supreme Court, not far from where the Civil War-era musical is set, provides a window into the Garth Drabinsky production. It’s the Canadian producer’s first show on Broadway since he was convicted in 2009 in Ottawa, Ontario, of defrauding Livent Inc. shareholders of nearly half a billion dollars. Publicly-traded Livent, which Drabinsky co-founded, filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998.Continue Reading

TONY NOMINATIONS: WILL ‘SIX’ OR ‘MJ’ RAIN ON ‘STRANGE LOOP’S PARADE?

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Two musicals in the past half-century have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama before they were up for Tony Awards:  Rent in 1996 and Hamilton in 2016. Both went on to win the Tony for best musical.

While statistically insignificant, that’s encouraging for A Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson’s idiosyncratic meditation about a young black gay man writing a musical, which won a Pulitzer in 2020.Continue Reading

BROADWAY NONPROFIT COFFERS SWELLED DURING SHUTDOWN (EXCLUSIVE)

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What started as an existential crisis for Broadway’s nonprofit producers turned into a windfall.

Thanks to a resurgent but fickle stock market, insurance payouts, cost-cutting and emergency grants from the federal government and foundations in response to Covid-19, Lincoln Center Theater and Roundabout Theatre Co. emerged from the 18-month industry shutdown wealthier than when they entered it.Continue Reading

JACKSON ESTATE WILL BE THERE FOR OUTSIZED ‘MJ’ PROFITS (EXCLUSIVE)

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If MJ  The Musical becomes a box office sensation, Paris Jackson, Bigi Jackson, Prince Jackson and the executors of their father’s estate stand to enjoy a bonanza.

Typically, half of a Broadway show’s adjusted net profit is shared among the lead producers. The other half goes to investors, who also qualify for some lead producer profits by raising or investing large sums. On MJ,  however, “the entire 50% share of Adjusted Net Profits [due the lead producers] will be paid to the Estate,” according to an investor operating agreement obtained by Broadway Journal.Continue Reading

PANDEMIC PUMMELS AMBASSADOR THEATRE GROUP (EXCLUSIVE)

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The self-described “world’s No. 1 live theater company” has taken a drubbing.

The parent company of U.K.-based Ambassador Theatre Group reported a pretax loss of $202 million for the 12 months ended in March 2021. The holding company attributed the results to Covid-19, which decimated rental income when its theaters shuttered in March 2020.Continue Reading

WITH SONDHEIM’S DEATH, ‘COMPANY’ HAS LINK TO ‘RENT’

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Stephen Sondheim’s death on Friday morning — an unexpected loss to the people in his life and to musical theater — attaches a new significance to the third Broadway revival of 1970’s Company. The musical, which marked the beginning of Sondheim’s decade-long collaboration with director Hal Prince, is now the last production that Broadway’s most revered composer-lyricist of the past 50 years directly worked on.Continue Reading

PANIC OR PRUDENCE? INSIDE THE EQUITY-LEAGUE SUMMER STOCK DRAMA (EXCLUSIVE)

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March 2020 ushered in a three-ring crisis for the Equity-League Health Trust Fund, the healthcare plan for theater actors and stage managers.

As the industry shut down indefinitely in response to Covid-19, the fund’s biggest revenue source, employer contributions, largely dried up; its stocks plunged amid a pandemic-induced market crash; and actors and stage managers lost their livelihood. In response, the trustees overseeing the fund’s investments sold all of its publicly traded stock, which as of May 31, 2020 was valued at $25 million, or 23 percent of total net assets of $107 million.

As a result, the fund missed most of a stock market rebound that would’ve generated millions of dollars. The liquidation may slow the fund’s recovery from the shutdown — at a time when few Actors’ Equity Association members, its primary constituency, qualify for even basic coverage and Broadway grosses are off by a third from two years ago.Continue Reading

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